Murder of two Ukrainian women in Germany: spouses charged
Kyiv • UNN
In Germany, a couple has been charged with the murder of two Ukrainian refugees and the kidnapping of a newborn baby. The couple planned to kidnap the baby to pass it off as their own.
Following an investigation, the prosecutor's office in Mannheim, Germany, has filed charges on suspicion of the murder of two refugees from Ukraine and the abduction of a newborn child in Baden-Württemberg. This was reported by DW, according to UNN.
Details
It is noted that a married couple, a 44-year-old woman and a 43-year-old man, are accused of the joint murder of the Ukrainian women. Prosecutors believe that the prerequisite for the crime was the couple's unrealized desire to have a daughter together. According to the investigation, no later than March 2023, the couple began to develop a plan to "kidnap a newborn female infant to pass it off as their own.
To increase the chances of her child being abducted, the 44-year-old woman joined a Ukrainian refugee support group on Telegram, through which she contacted the 27-year-old victim in January 2024 when she was looking for an interpreter for her daughter's upcoming birth,
The indictment states that a week after the birth of the child, on March 6, the couple invited the Ukrainian women to a restaurant and secretly administered sedatives to them. They then took them both away, ostensibly to help them, but in reality they killed the Ukrainian women and took their child.
The defendants are currently in custody.
Addendum
The body of 51-year-old Marina Stetsenko was found on March 20 after a two-week search. Investigators found it on the shore of a lake near Hockenheim. The search operation began after the police discovered the body of her daughter Margarita with signs of violent death on the banks of the Rhine on March 7, and it became known that her newborn child had been abducted.
The mother, grandmother, and child were living in a refugee center in the Rhine-Neckar district after moving to Germany from Ukraine to escape the full-scale war unleashed by Russia.
Police arrested the couple on March 13 after found their child unharmed. The defendants are in custody. The press release from the prosecutor's office did not specify the citizenship or origin of the accused. However, German media have previously reported that the suspects are Russian and German.
